"Do You Hate Women?"

[Faramir Jones]

At the start of The Hobbit, Bilbo asked if Gandalf was 'responsible for so many quiet lads and lasses going off into the Blue for mad adventures?' (My emphasis) Tolkien therefore allowed for female as well as male hobbits to go off on adventures.

When I saw what Jackson and others had done in their adaptation of The Hobbit, I wondered why they bothered with Tauriel, when they could have put in a female hobbit instead, and then claimed some authorial support for this.